John Bell

John Bell (18 February 1796-10 September 1869) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-TN 7) from 4 March 1827 to 3 March 1841 (succeeding Sam Houston and preceding Robert L. Caruthers), Secretary of War from 5 March to 11 September 1841 (succeeding Joel Roberts Poinsett and preceding John Canfield Spencer), and a US Senator from 22 November 1847 to 3 March 1859 (succeeding Spencer Jarnagin and preceding Alfred O.P. Nicholson).

Biography
John Bell was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1796, and he became a lawyer in Franklin in 1816. In 1817, he entered politics as a Democratic-Republican state senator, and he voted for moving the state capital to Murfreesboro. He went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1827 to 1841, and, although he was initially an ally of Andrew Jackson, he aligned himself with the Whigs in the mid-1830s, earning him the nickname "the Great Apostate". He consistently battled James K. Polk over issues such as the national bank and the election spoils system, and he became the leader of the state's Whigs in 1840. In 1841, he served as Secretary of War under President William Harrison, but he resigned during John Tyler's disastrous presidency, going on to serve in the US Senate from 1847 to 1859. Although a slaveowner, he was one of the few southerners who opposed the expansion of slavery during the 1850s, and he campaigned vigorously against secession in the years leading up to the American Civil War. In 1860, he ran for president as the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, which took a neutral stance on the issue of slavery and opposed secession. He won the border states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia due to his view that the US Constitution protected slavery, thereby rendering secession unnecessary. After the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861, Bell abandoned the Union cause and supported the Confederacy, and he died in Dover, Tennessee in 1869.